UEFA Cup Memories: Gothenburg 1982

By: Ian Rose | June 28th, 2007

This is the first in a series of posts called UEFA Cup Memories, bringing back some of the great moments in the tournament’s history.

With all the talk about Sven-Göran Eriksson and his imminent move to Manchester City, the focus has been on Sven’s rather unimpressive time as England manager. His incredible record as a club manager, as a builder of great teams, both domestic and European, has been a bit neglected. For those looking for a little more history on just how good Eriksson has been, there’s a great post on 101 Great Goals that sums it up nicely.

For my part, I’d like to concentrate on what I consider to be his greatest achievement as a coach, the 1982 UEFA Cup title with IFK Gothenburg. When he took over IFK in 1979, no team from outside of England, Germany, Italy or the Netherlands had ever captured a UEFA Cup, and no Scandinavian team had ever won any European cup competition. In just three years at the helm, he amassed two domestic cups and two league titles, and began a classic run up to the UEFA Cup.

In the first round, Gothenburg was dominant, taking out local rivals Haka of Finland 7-2, but the second round saw them come close to an early exit, squeezing by Austrian side Sturm Graz on a 5-4 aggregate (2-2 away, 3-2 home). The third round saw another dominating performance over Dinamo Bucharest, gaining them their first-ever place in the quarterfinals. Then, once again, everything looked to be falling apart for Gothenburg. Despite their successes, the club was almost bankrupt, and in one of the classic cases of fans saving their team, a supporters group loaned the team money to travel to Valencia for the quarterfinal away tie. They didn’t disappoint, drawing 2-2 in Valencia and then taking the home match 2-0. Perhaps the most magical moment was the fantastic long-distance free kick goal to start off the scoring (I can’t find the player’s name, but would love to know who it was).

Once again, they nudged past their semifinal opponent, Kaiserslautern of Germany, for a 3-2 aggregate that required extra time to be decided. That set up a final against Hamburg, who had been far more dominant, winning their semi 6-3.

In one of the finest team performances in UEFA Cup history, Gothenburg marched all over the favored Hamburg side, first winning the cagey home leg 1-0, then dominating the away leg, 3-0 for a 4-0 aggregate win, the first European cup win by any team from Scandinavia. It remains one of the great achievements in European football, especially considering the financial stresses the team was under at the time, and it cements Sven’s place in UEFA Cup history.

NOTE: I had originally embedded video of each of the last three rounds of the tournament, but we’re having a bit of technical trouble today, and they don’t seem to be working, so here are the links:

The quarter vs. Valencia
The semi vs. Kaiser
The final vs. Hamburg